A bit of a stretch, you say, for finding knowledge? Not so, according to a recent CIO article about Twitter titled "Twitter's Potential for Business Users." Forget blogging, forget instant messaging--those last-century technologies can't come close to the pervasiveness of Twitter's always on (if you want), always with you (are you ever really far from your cell phone?), always dynamic environment where friends and strangers can keep you constantly up-to-date on their goings on. Like being a voyeur? Twitter lets you take a peek inside the worlds of thousands of fellow twitterers--albeit only in 140-character tweets.

As APQC kicks off its current KM consortium benchmarking study--this one focused on advances in expertise location and social networking--the project team has identified several themes related to the topic. One of these themes is how expertise location and social networking are related to the larger sphere of collaboration and knowledge sharing. Namely, can expertise location and social networking tools be used to support collaboration and knowledge sharing?

Today this might seem like a natural fit, but when APQC conducted its first study on expert locator systems in 2003, the intent behind such systems was more limited in scope and purpose: to link people to information about other people, to identify people with expertise and link them to those with questions or problems, and to locate potential staff for projects requiring specific expertise. And social networking was a small blip on the technology radar, not the explosive presence it is today.

If you missed the unveiling of APQC's KM Maturity Model (KMMM) at our May 2008 KM conference, you're in luck.  Cindy Hubert and Darcy Lemons have written an introduction to the model, which you can download here: APQC's KM Maturity Model. 

APQC's KMMM provides a road map for moving from immature, inconsistent knowledge management activities to mature, disciplined approaches aligned to strategic business imperatives.

At the conference, Cindy and her three panelists talked about the value of the KMMM to their efforts.

Although there's been much talk about the evolution of KM and the new ways of collaborating--through social networking, virtual worlds, and the like--it strikes me as interesting that, not only have some long-running KM issues not been solved, but they've resurfaced as important topics. From data points like our monthly APQC KM community calls, request for quotes we receive, and recent conversations with APQC members, four issues seem to stand out: taxonomy, expertise location, best practices, and lessons learned.

Recently, I learned of some taxonomy development projects at a few large-scale organizations, including one very significant software provider. The fact that these organizations are still considering developing enterprise taxonomy at a time when everyone seems to just "google" everything is a bit surprising to me. What, if anything, does this say about folksonomies?

Measuring return on investment for KM has always been a challenge. Recently, I received an e-mail from one of our members--Kevin Gannon of U.S. Navy Carrier Team One--asking about this topic.

One of our process masters ... found [an] article on KM ROI--very interesting.  There are a couple of "estimates" such as "average cost of turnover is 1.5 times the annual salary of the job," "it takes 13.5 months for a new employees to maximize their efficiency," "ROI for a brain-drain orientation project is 10:1," etc.  My question is: As we start trying to nail down ROI calculations, do you think it is fair to quote numbers like this?  That question might be too subjective--a better one might be: Do these numbers seem to match your experience in this area?

What I told him was this: Over the years, APQC has had the opportunity to do deep research as well as hands-on work with organizations that have succeeded in measuring the impact of their KM efforts.  These efforts were measured via targeted projects where knowledge flow and KM approaches (e.g., communities of practice, best practice replication) were embedded into the business workflow.  The results have ranged from a 50 percent return on investment within the first nine months up to a 5:1 return on continuous efforts. 

APQC is always looking for more effective ways to calculate ROI. If your organization has experienced an ROI from KM, we'd love to hear about the focus of your efforts and how you performed your calculations.

Over the past few months, a lot has been written about how the Internet and other technologies are affecting the way in which we read, think, and learn. One article that has generated particular attention is Nicholas Carr's "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" in the July/August issue of The Atlantic. Carr argues that, for most people, the Web is becoming the primary channel through which information is absorbed and processed. Although "having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information" provides many advantages, there is a tradeoff:

...what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

I've talked with a lot of people recently about the KM opportunities and challenges facing their organizations. One theme that emerged from these conversations is the pervasive struggle to promote knowledge sharing among various generations of employees. Repeatedly, I heard how the "younger" professionals, especially Gen Y and the Millennials, are difficult to engage--they work and learn differently, they don't value what's come before them, and so on. (Note: These are blanket generalizations. I realize that not all young professionals behave this way.)

Here's an excerpt from Jerry's Editor's letter: